Universal might have yet another female-led hit in its hands.
The studio emerged the winner of a four-way bidding war for the rights to Gillian Flynn’s award-winning short story “The Grownup.” The 62-page tale centers on a fraudulent psychic who reconsiders the possibility of ghosts when she visits the home of a new customer.
Flynn adapted her novel “Gone Girl” and is currently working on the script for (“Gone Girl” director) David Fincher’s “Strangers on a Train” remake. But Black List screenwriter Natalie Krinsky will be translating “The Grownup” for the big screen.
Here is the book synopsis for “The Grownup”:
A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the “psychic” visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan’s terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore. Miles, Susan’s teenage stepson, doesn’t help matters with his disturbing manner and grisly imagination. The three are soon locked in a chilling battle to discover where the evil truly lurks and what, if anything, can be done to escape it.
[via THR]